, attract visitors from Yerevan, Armenia's capital, who take the 6 hour road trek via Mount Ararat to Stepanakert, centre of the Karabakh's democracy that was this week snuffed out. The trip is only 20 minutes by air from a modern airport. But planes have not flown for years because the Azeri government threatens to shoot them down. The country fell to Russia in the early nineteenth century, and the demographic evidence from the first census of that time proves that it was all-Armenian and the area should have been allocated to this state when Stalin divided the territory in 1920. Instead, he gave it to Azerbaijan, and the mistake was not rectified until a civil war after the collapse of the USSR. The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh – still the great majority of the population – voted first to join with Armenia (the wiser course) but then (courageously as they thought) opted for independence. The war had commen){kind=link}
The destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh shows that the West has again failed to stand up to international aggression
It happened quickly, the final invasion, and with hundreds of Orthodox Christians killed by the aggressors. Armenia, led by a one-time human rights lawyer, had no alternative but to save thousands of its people from death by surrendering their enclave at Nagorno-Karabakh to the brutal forces of Ilham Aliyev, dictator of Azerbaijan.
It was Russia, once again, that was principally to blame: it was given by a foolish UN Security Council the duty to keep the peace, but when Armenia condemned the invasion of Ukraine, Putin in revenge withdrew all protection of Nagorno-Karabakh and let the Azerbaijan army off its leash.
120,000 citizens are now at its mercy, being forced either to abandon their ancestral homes or else live under a tyranny that has fomented hatred against them for many years.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a small, mountainous country in the clouds, settled by Armenians for many centuries. It was the first in 301 AD to adopt Christianity.